VOICED compilation

VOICED is a sound installation curated and produced by multimedia artists Duncan Robertson and Lucía Montero for Phytology, a physic garden, cultural institute and urban wilderness that opened in Bethnal Green Nature Reserve in London, in 2014. The installation features the work of musicians , writers and poets Lucy Cash, David Nash, James Nixon, Stick in the Wheel and Sarah Westcott who undertook residencies in the Reserve in 2015. See below for the text of the works featured in these preview clips.

For more information go to phytology.org.uk or contact Janette Scott Arts PR on janettescottartspr@gmail.com

I am jarred by the sound of a break-neck bomb
bewitching the search-lit air. I am out of my body
& from above a rose-gold crosshair
daring the haywire sky.
I am already dead & feel like doing so
before the cleft second
when pressure sucks lungs chunked by a sudden butcher.
My navel blossoms like doggerel,
religious innards are sent on mission to the edge
of me.
A blown network.
I am strewn & bunged
with bits of myself & fade-out, crestfallen –
as cut fires babble on in my fallow sanctuary.

It starts like this: with the sound of rain, heard, not on leaves, or the roof of a hut, but from deep inside the earth.

And it starts like this: with wild cyclamen - the architecture of its petals like a folded secret, their colour resonantly pink against the damp brown of late summer soil. A flower as riddle.

And it starts like this: with the three most common characteristics of
gardeners: economy, simplicity and hospitality. And with the names of patron saints of gardens: St Fiacre; St Isidore; and St Phocas.

Phocas lived during Rome’s anti -Christian persecution. When, late one night, two Roman soldiers arrived on his doorstep, he gave a false identity, served them a good dinner from his crop of homegrown vegetables, and then dug a large hole in the middle of his garden. Early next morning when the soldiers woke, he took them to the hole and offered himself up for beheading.

Moments later - their duty executed and their former host now dead - the soldiers pause before leaving. They look around them, and borrowing Phocas’ spade, they cover his body with the freshly dug soil.